Zometool basics kit

Zometool, the 90's classroom culture classic is now available on Neoballs.com.

It's the only product that we've used that's as geometrically expressive as magnetic spheres, and in some aspects even more useful due to their rigid geometry. You can't bounce, crush or bend them like magnet structures, so 'tool' is an apt description.

Good luck trying to imagine the machine that molds the hallow Zome connector. Aside from being a marvel of injection-molded manufacturing, the 62 sided universal Zome ball is what makes it the most advanced ball and stick connector system.

Red rods connect to the 12 pentagonal sides of a dodecahedron. Yellow rods connect to the 20 triangular sides of an icosahedron. And blue rods connect to the 30 rectangular sides of of a rhombic triacontahedron.

Zometool is a quintessential left brain scratcher developed before 'STEM' was even coined. Fans of symmetry, clicky satisfaction, spatial visualization, and the golden ratio, should apply.

This project kit includes everything you need to create a Buckyball (molecule of the year in 1991). A Buckyball has 60 corners, like a soccer ball. 

Carbon is an amazing element which can take many forms; famously diamond, coal and graphite. In 1985 a new form (allotrope) of carbon, C60, was discovered; it was

named the Buckminsterfullerene in honor of R. Buckminster Fuller because the shape of the molecules resembled Fuller's Geodesic Domes.

Predicted by Eiji Osawa in 1970, the 1985 discovery of the C60 molecule won Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It also gave birth to a new field of chemistry, given to the exploration of fullerenes.

With potential applications spanning the gamut from electronics, superconductivity, drug delivery, nanotechnology and more; fullerenes are an exciting part of a future that by today's tech standards seems downright magical.

Recommended ages 10+

• Parts included: 150

• Struts: 90 (blue color)

• Nodes: 60 (black color)

There are very few rules with Zometool:

• If it works, it works perfectly.

• Take it apart, don't break it apart.

• Put it back in the box. Keep your parts organized and they'll last for a long, long time.

Designed in Colorado, and fully manufactured here too, with kid-safe materials and wind power.

WARNING: Choking Hazard. Small parts. NOT for children under 3 years.